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Biographical Memoirs of Deceased Fellows
Originally prepared for publication as part of Bright Sparcs by the Australian Science Archives Project.
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Australian Academy of Science Biographical Memoirs of Deceased Fellows Originally prepared for publication as part of Bright Sparcs by the Australian Science Archives Project. |
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This short memoir of Sir Sydney Sunderland is based on autobiographical information assembled by Sir Sydney, on a number of informal discussions the author had with him during the last five years of his life, and on the more accessible public documentation of his many activities associated with the University of Melbourne and the Federal and State Governments. In these notes I am more concerned with providing a picture of the kind of man Sydney Sunderland was, his science, and his contributions to Australian universities and to the community, than with presenting exhaustive detail of his many achievements.
Sydney Sunderland was born in Brisbane on the last day of 1910.
His father was a journalist and sporting identity in Brisbane
and his family provided a strongly supportive environment for
their only surviving child, who quickly established himself as
an outstanding schoolboy athlete and student. He spent a couple
of years at Scotch College, Melbourne, when his father was circulation
manager of the recently established Sun newspaper, and
then completed his schooling at Brisbane State High School. Sydney
Sutherland was awarded an Open Scholarship in 1930 and started
a science course at the University of Queensland. Since at that
time there was no medical school in the University of Queensland,
students wishing to complete a medical course had to enrol at
either Sydney or Melbourne. This became possible financially for
Sydney Sunderland when, as top student in first year Science,
he won the Raff Memorial Scholarship. In 1931 he entered second
year medicine in the University of Melbourne, and so began a highly
productive association which lasted more than sixty years. Sunderland
graduated as top student in medicine in 1935, having 'topped'
every other year along the way and been awarded the Exhibition
and Dwight Prize in Anatomy, the Jamieson Prize in Clinical Medicine,
the Keith Levi Scholarship, and the Fulton Scholarship in Obstetrics
and Gynaecology. He also passed the Primary Fellowship Examination
of the Royal College of Surgeons (London) a year before graduating.
Quite early, as a medical student, Sydney Sunderland was attracted
to research. In this, he was greatly influenced, firstly by the
neurologist Leonard Cox, and then by the singularly charismatic
professor of anatomy at Melbourne, Frederic Wood Jones, These
two senior colleagues guided Sunderland's interests toward neurology
and greased the tracks for his career with a breathtaking directness.
Immediately on graduation Sunderland was offered a Senior Lectureship
in Anatomy, which he accepted. He was simultaneously appointed
Assistant Neurologist in Cox's neurological clinic at the Alfred
Hospital, and also Assistant to the eminent surgeon, Hugh Trumble,
who specialized in neurosurgery at the same hospital. These four
remained close colleagues and friends throughout their lives.
In 1937 the ever-restless and controversial Wood Jones returned
to England to the chair of anatomy at Manchester. Before leaving
Melbourne, however, he arranged Sunderland's appointment as a
Demonstrator in the Department of Human Anatomy in Oxford with
Le Gros Clark. Le Gros Clark and the young 'colonial' did not
warm to each other, although Sunderland completed four papers
on the cerebral cortex while in Oxford, using the Marchi staining
technique and retrograde neuronal degeneration for tracing cortical
projections in the macaque monkey. Fortunately for both Sunderland
and the University of Melbourne, on 21 July 1938 he was offered,
and accepted, the chair of anatomy in the University of Melbourne!
He was then 27 years old.
Sunderland arranged with the University of Melbourne to take up
his professorial duties early in 1940, so that he could complete
the research he had begun at Oxford and also make the 'grand tour'
of several active laboratories in North America. While in Oxford
he spent much time in the neuro-surgical unit of the recently
appointed first Nuffield Professor of Surgery, Sir Hugh Cairns.
Cairns, an Adelaide graduate and one of the pioneers of neurosurgery
in the UK, encouraged Sunderland's participation in neuroanatomical
research in his department. There he developed a friendship with
the brilliant Pio del Rio-Hortega, a political refugee from Franco's
Spain, who had been a student to the Nobel Laureate Ramon y Cajal.
Rio-Hortega introduced Sunderland to the various silver staining
techniques that the Spanish neurohistologists had developed for
visualizing the fine structure of neurons and glial cells, and
especially microglial cells, which Rio-Hortega had independently
identified.
Sunderland left Oxford in mid-1939 to spend three months at the
Montreal Neurological Institute with Wilder Penfield's group,
then at its peak. Penfield's very great contribution, for which
he received both the Nobel Prize and the Order of Merit, was his
systematic investigation of the functional organization of the
human cerebral cortex. This study was done on patients undergoing
cerebral surgery for the removal of tumors or scar tissue resulting
from previous brain injury: at that time, these procedures were
done in the conscious patient using local anesthesia at the surgical
site. Penfield developed methods of identifying and mapping those
regions of the cortex directly concerned with the voluntary movement
of the limbs and the perception of the surrounding world. Once
identified, these zones could be avoided or minimally resected
by the neurosurgeon when removing the tumor or scar tissue: this
minimized the sensorimotor disability resulting from the surgical
removal of brain tissue. These procedures were soon to become
especially important in dealing with the aftermath of penetrating
wounds of the head in the war-injured. Sunderland developed the
greatest respect for Penfield and his research, and about twenty
years later was able to invite him to contribute to the celebration
of the centenary of the Melbourne University Medical School (1962).
At these celebrations the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was
conferred on Penfield.
Other groups visited in this 'grand tour' late in 1939, under
the shadow of the impending world conflict, were the important
neuroanatomical and clinical neurological groups at Toronto and
Harvard, the neurophysiologist John Fulton at Yale, the neurosurgeon
Earl Walker at Johns Hopkins, who had just published his classic
monograph on the connections and organization of the primate thalamus,
and the neurological centres at St Louis, Chicago, Rochester,
Los Angeles and San Francisco. Sunderland returned to Melbourne
at the end of 1939, after the outbreak of war.
Sydney Sunderland's early association with Wood Jones, and his
short period in Oxford before the outbreak of the Second World
War, were to determine the direction of his subsequent professional
career as a neuroanatomist. Wood Jones was larger than life, an
excellent teacher, public speaker and writer (as in his book,
The Hand), sharply alert to what would interest an audience
and, most importantly, an outstanding intellect. He was one of
the thinking, observational biologists of his generation and,
although often controversial (he was anti-Darwinian), commanded
respect from a wide international scientific audience. Le Gros
Clark, Penfield, and Earl Walker trod a different path, with an
emphasis on experimentation and the application of innovative
techniques. Each of these great exper-imentalists was prepared
to speculate on the meaning of the data, and to develop models
of cortical and thalamic organization that could then be further
examined by appropriate experimentation. In addition, Le Gros
Clark was a great comparative anatomist, especially interested
in primate evolution. (In the 1950s, he played an important role
in exposing the Piltdown forgery.) Thus, the young Sunderland
had the good fortune to work with some of the great neuroanatomists
of the period, and their imprint was apparent in the whole of
his subsequent career. Sunderland did publish many experimental
studies on nerve and nerve injuries, but his strength and evident
primary interest was along the observational path of Wood Jones.
Rather than pursuing comparative anatomical studies of the brain,
however, as did Wood Jones and Le Gros Clark, Sunderland was to
turn his research focus to the human peripheral nervous system
and its responses to injury. This shift was really dictated by
the circumstances of the Second World War, and the many Australian
troops chronically disabled by nerve injuries produced by penetrating
injuries of the limbs in the period 1940-1945. An attractive feature
of such studies was that they led to great advances in the surgical
management of nerve injuries, which in turn enhanced the recovery
of useful limb function in many patients.
A perhaps unexpected change in Sunderland's subsequent post-war
career was that although his early mentors were now in English
universities, he became more closely linked to clinical neuroscience
in the USA than to that in the UK. This may have resulted from
the friendly support and encouragement the very young Sunderland
received in North America, contrasting with the more austere and
reserved response of some English academics to 'colonials'.
Sydney Sunderland was working in Penfield's department at the
outbreak of war in 1939, but was able to return to the University
of Melbourne by the end of that year. In addition to chairing
the Department of Anatomy and doing most of the teaching of undergraduates
throughout the period of the war, Sunderland became responsible
for a Peripheral Nerve Injuries Unit that had been set up at the
115 AGH, Heidelberg, Victoria. All Australian servicemen sustaining
chronic nerve injuries were sent to this unit for treatment. The
experience of the next five years was to provide the framework
of Sunderland's subsequent research career, in which peripheral
nerve organization and its repair following injury were to become
central topics. Eighty years earlier, Union troops with rifle-bullet
wounds of peripheral nerves sustained in the battle of Gettysberg
had triggered the first intensive and systematic study, by Weir
Mitchell, of nerve injuries and their consequences, including
the excruciating and disabling condition of causalgia. Sunderland
was now able to parallel the research of his eminent predecessor,
with the advantage of having powerful new neuroanatomical research
tools and a backup of improved neurosurgical procedures that surgeons
could possibly develop to repair injured nerves. The first papers
reporting these clinical neurological studies were published in
1944-45.
Throughout his career Sydney Sunderland retained wide research
interests, evident from papers published on various aspects of
topographic anatomy, structure of the cerebral cortex, the connections
of the hypothalamus, the vascular supply of various organs and
tissues, the pupilloconstrictor pathways, and medical education.
Nonetheless, the majority of his papers were focused on the structure
of human peripheral nerves, the pathophysiology of nerve injury
and regeneration, the disabilities of hand function resulting
from nerve injuries of the forelimb, and the natural history of
anatomical and functional recovery following these injuries. A
number of papers were concerned with the innervation of the small
muscles of the hand, the normal action of these muscles, and their
abnormal actions following nerve injury. Sunderland considered
that his own work 'was at all times directed to the elucidation
of those principles on which the clinical management of nerve
injuries should be based'. One great strength of Sunderland's
peripheral nerve studies was that he personally was able to study
the natural history of each of 365 patients with peripheral nerve
injuries for a period of ten years or more, and to follow the
successive stages of their recovery of sensorimotor function.
This very effective co-operation of patient (mainly battle casualties)
and investigator flowed from the trust that developed between
them. After their discharge from hospital, many of these patients,
now ex-servicemen, would repeatedly travel long distances to be
examined and reviewed by Sunderland. These men strongly believed
in the great value of this long, systematic study of their nerve
injuries. A second strength of this longitudinal study was that
the surgical repair of nerve injuries was not performed by Sunderland,
thus introducing the essential objectivity needed in such studies.
In fact, much of the reparative surgery was done by Sunderland's
mentor Hugh Trumble. The two editions of Nerves and Nerve Injuries
(1968, 1978), and Nerve Injuries and Their Repair (1991)
summarize this large body of work and place it in the context
of other contemporary work in the field. In his foreword to the
first edition of Sunderland's encyclopedic monograph, Sir Francis
Walshe pointed out that 'This volume has clearly been a labour
of love of many years for its author'. The enduring quality of
these studies is evident from the fact that in the period 1991-1995
Sunderland's publications were cited on average in 110 neurological
papers each year (ISI Neuroscience Citation Index). In
his later life Sunderland was often referred to as the 'father
of modern nerve surgery'. In 1979 he was the honoured Founders
Lecturer of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand at its
meeting in San Francisco, and in 1986 at an international meeting
in Tokyo he was cited as a 'Pioneer in the Field of Hand Surgery'.
Revealing features of Sunderland's research were that he was sole
author of about 75% of his published papers, and that in the remaining
papers the co-authors were usually long-time colleagues and members
of the Department of Anatomy (Bradley, Ray, Lavarack, Merrillees,
Roche, Adey). Although meticulous and elegantly planned, Sunderland's
research did not depend on the use of technically innovative procedures
and equipment, reflecting his view that good research is the product
of carefully shaped questions, accurate observation and thoughtful
analysis of the data obtained. Sunderland dismissed mindless experimentation
and thought it to be too common in the current neurobiology. This
view, of course, was in accord with those of two of his heroes,
the great experimentalist Claude Bernard and the great field naturalist
Frederic Wood Jones.
The following paragraphs briefly summarize Sydney Sunderland's
research achievements. This work, with a full bibliography, is
most accessible in Sunderland's monographs.
Sunderland recognized the complexity of the biology of peripheral
nerves, and that the function of their consistent axons depends
in no small measure on their blood supply and the organization
of the interfascicular connective tissue of each nerve. These
non-neural elements were recognized as having an important role
in limiting the effects of injury on the axon populations of a
nerve, and on the subsequent processes of functional recovery.
Sunderland examined and described the fascicular anatomy of all
the major nerve trunks in the human subject, emphasizing their
changing patterns along the length of each trunk, and their relations
to specific nerve branches of the main trunk that innervate particular
muscles or particular areas of skin. He attempted to correlate
these anatomical patterns with the susceptibility of each nerve
to injury resulting from mechanical deformation, and with its
subsequent recovery following mechanical injury.
Sunderland also studied the axon populations of peripheral nerves,
their responses to injury, and their subsequent degeneration or
regeneration. Again, these studies were mainly on human tissues.
In one study the atrophy of the endoneural tube distal to the
site of axonal injury was found to have little effect on the subsequent
regrowth of the axon into the denervated tissue. Similarly, it
was found that the atrophy of muscle fibres resulting from prior
denervation did not limit their subsequent reinnervation, even
when the period of denervation had extended over many months.
These studies did show clearly that the full restoration of muscle
function following interruption of its nerve supply depends on
much more than the simple re-establishment of neuromuscular continuity.
The motoneuronal axons which make synaptic contact with the denervated
muscle fibres must originate from the appropriate motoneuronal
pools in the spinal cord, they must be sufficient in number, and
they must reinnervate a substantial fraction of the initially
denervated extrafusal muscle fibres. In addition, the innervation
and function of muscle spindles in these muscles must be re-established.
Comparable studies of cutaneous nerves emphasized the complexity
of sensory innervation and the myriad factors which determine
the recovery of cutaneous sensibility following nerve injury.
Sunderland also systematically examined the manner and rate of
regeneration of previously interrupted peripheral nerve axons,
how this varied in different nerves and was modified by the type
of nerve injury, and how different types of surgical repair could
influence the final recovery of sensory or motor function in the
patient.
In addition to studying gunshot wounds of nerves, Sunderland also
examined traction and compression injuries of those nerves mediating
sensorimotor functions of the hand. As with penetrating injuries,
he found that the integrity of the nerve's blood supply was critical,
and that factors impairing it were those which also impaired nerve
conduction. Furthermore, those peripheral nerves most readily
injured by traction were characterized by having relatively few
large fascicles of nerve fibres supported by a minimum of non-neural
interfascicular tissue.
Yet another problem examined by Sunderland was a relatively common
and severely debilitating complication that can develop following
a proximal lesion of one of the nerves innervating the hand or
foot. This extremely painful condition, first systematically studied
by Weir Mitchell eighty years earlier and termed causalgia
by him, most commonly occurs following an incomplete nerve lesion
resulting from a missile penetrating the upper arm or thigh, and
may develop immediately following the injury, or weeks or months
later. Sunderland's contribution to the understanding of the basis
of causalgia was to bring together the evidence for a central
spinal location for its neuropathology, supporting the views of
Livingstone. This model did not preclude contributing factors
operating at the site of nerve injury, but it did emphasize that
the etiology of the condition is complex, and it provided an explanation
for the well-known clinical finding that repair of the peripheral
nerve injury or removal of local neuromas may not cure the condition.
Although the focus of recent studies, the neuronal genesis of
causalgia is still not clear. However, Sunderland's idea that
there is disruption of the processing of sensory information in
the regional spinal cord circuitry receiving input from the injured
nerve, is still current.
Extensive experience with peripheral nerve injuries, their surgical
management and 'repair', and the subsequent recovery of sensorimotor
function, prompted Sunderland to develop a classification that
is based on the histopathology of the nerve injury rather than
its cause. He recognized five stages of nerve damage, increasing
in severity from loss of nerve conduction in structurally intact
axons, loss of axonal continuity and associated Wallerian degeneration,
the disruption of the internal structure of nerve fascicles, the
disorganization of the nerve trunk's fascicular anatomy, and finally
the loss of continuity of the nerve trunk. Each category of nerve
injury could be recognized clinically, and provided some guide
to the prognosis of the injury and the best form of clinical management.
In seeking to explain the impact of Sunderland's research on peripheral
nerve injury, several factors stand out. First, he approached
each problem through questions that would be clinically relevant,
and examined them systematically in terms of the known neuroanatomy
and neurophysiology. Secondly, he was always practical and down-to-earth
in his approach and, especially in his 'bible' on nerve injuries,
explained carefully how sensorimotor dysfunction might be assessed
by the neurologist in the months following nerve injury or attempts
at repair. Sunderland's studies of nerve injuries happened to
coincide with the introduction of penicillin, so that surgeons
could now concentrate their efforts on microsurgical techniques.
This meant that the microanatomy of peripheral nerves, at the
level of resolution that could be visualized at the operating
table, assumed a special clinical importance that was largely
met by Sunderland's investigations.
Sydney Sunderland was an excellent lecturer and soon had the reputation
in the University of Melbourne Medical School of being a first-rate
teacher of neuroanatomy. As was the current fashion, he used to
great advantage the blackboard presentation of the three-dimensional
relations of the different brain structures. In the background
of the portrait of him, painted by Wes Walters, that hangs in
the Sunderland Lecture Theatre in the Medical Centre at Parkville,
this particular skill is alluded to. In teaching undergraduates,
Sunderland relied on the highly competent presentation, both in
the dissecting room and in the lecture theatre, of anatomical
fact that he considered should constitute part of the education
of every practising doctor. This matter-of-fact approach to teaching
was particularly well expressed in the facilities of the new building
that housed the Anatomy Department from 1967 and that was largely
designed, in all its grandeur, by Sunderland and his staff. The
fully air-conditioned dissecting room, the excellent anatomy museum
and the 'Padua' theatres for small-group tutorials and demonstrations
that they designed, continue to be greatly appreciated by the
hordes of undergraduate students who currently use them. Sunderland
fully exploited these wonderful facilities by appointing competent
and knowledgeable tenured senior academic staff, and using trainee
surgeons to tutor undergraduate students in anatomy. The senior
staff of the Department of Anatomy included early Melbourne associates
(Russell, Ray, and Bradley, each of whom became a professor in
the Department) and other very experienced anatomists (Drs Lavarack,
Merrillees and Adey).
In 1953-54, at the beginning of his period as Dean of the Faculty
of Medicine, Sydney Sunderland was Visiting Professor of Anatomy
in Bodian's department in the Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine at Baltimore, and during that year was freed from
administrative duties and able to concentrate on his research
and teaching.
Sydney Sunderland was elected Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
in 1953. As Professor of Anatomy he held this part-time position
until 1961. He was then appointed Professor of Experimental Neurology
and held this position and that of Dean until 1971. He retired
in 1975 but continued working in the Department of Anatomy as
Emeritus Professor until 1993.
During his eighteen years as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine,
Australian universities, and particularly the medical schools,
changed profoundly. In no small measure this upheaval was the
result of the recommendations of the Australian Universities Commission,
of which Sunderland was a leading member. In the 1950s a number
of clinical chairs were set up in the teaching hospitals, in medicine,
surgery, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, ophthalmology,
and child health. The establishment of a second medical school
in Melbourne, at Monash University in 1960, with the transfer
of the use of Alfred Hospital and Prince Henry's Hospital as teaching
hospitals to Monash, produced serious overloading of the teaching
facilities at the Royal Melbourne and St Vincent's Hospitals that
remained with the University of Melbourne. The shortage of teaching
facilities was compounded by the University's commitment to the
State Government to expand the intake of medical students in order
to meet the perceived need for medical services in Victoria. These
problems were slowly resolved by pursuing a vigorous policy of
expansion of the preclinical and clinical University departments
that was implemented during Sunderland's deanship. During his
period as Dean the number of professors was increased from six
to twenty-four, mainly in the clinical departments, and a Clinical
Sciences Block was built in each teaching hospital affiliated
with the University of Melbourne. New buildings to house the preclinical
departments and the Brownless Medical Library were completed in
1967, and the Austin Hospital became an important addition to
the teaching hospitals of the Medical School of the University
of Melbourne.
Sydney Sunderland was an active member of many Federal Government
committees. He represented universities with medical schools on
the National Health and Medical Research Council, and was a member
of the Council's Medical Research Advisory Committee from 1953
to 1969. He was chairman of the latter committee from 1964 to
1969. In 1970-1971 he was a member of the Advisory Medical Board
of Australia.
One of Sunderland's most important and fruitful commitments to
the Federal Government was his long association with the Australian
Universities Commission. He was the longest-serving member of
the AUC, working from 1962 until 1976 with all four chairmen of
the Commission - Sir Leslie Martin, Sir Lennox Hewitt, Sir Henry
Basten and Professor Peter Karmel. Even before joining the AUC,
Sunderland worked on a sub-committee with Sir Leslie Martin to
assess the costs of the clinical training of medical students
in teaching hospitals, a task that involved visiting all the medical
schools and most teaching hospitals throughout Australia. The
report of this committee provided the baseline data for the subsequent
operations of the AUC.
The AUC was feverishly active in the 1960s and '70s, during which
period twelve new universities and six new medical schools were
created. At the same time the older universities received substantial
injections of funds. Sunderland was involved in all these developments,
particularly those relating to medical schools and teaching hospitals.
He was a persistent advocate of payment for clinical teaching
undertaken by visiting honorary medical staff, and of the building
of Clinical Science facilities in teaching hospitals to accommodate
university clinical science departments, both practices eventually
being adopted.
Sunderland was particularly involved with the establishment of the medical school in Perth, not initially through the AUC but through a sub-committee of the Senate of the University of Western Australia, appointed in 1955. Financial support from the AUC eventually gave reality to the University's proposal.
Sunderland had a long association with the Australian Department
of External Affairs. His most important commitment, although eventually
it came to nothing, was in Indonesia. At the request of the Indonesian
Government, the Australian Government agreed to support the creation
of a medical school at Bukittingi, in central Sumatra (1956-1960).
The project was to operate under the auspices of the Medical School
of the University of Melbourne. Planning was well advanced, buildings
erected, and an Australian co-ordinator in residence, when the
scheme had to be abandoned because of the outbreak of civil war
in the area. During the 1960s, Sunderland acted in an advisory
capacity concerning the establishment of medical schools in various
other countries, including Burma and New Guinea.
Other Committees of the Federal Government that were chaired by
Sunderland included the Protective Chemical Research Advisory
Committee (1964-73), the Safety Review Committee of the Australian
Atomic Energy Commission (1961-74), and the National Radiation
Advisory Committee (1951-1964).
Sydney Sunderland was created a Knight Bachelor by the Governor-General
of the Commonwealth of Australia on 12 June 1971 'for distinguished
services to medicine and government'.
Sunderland also served for remarkably long periods on State Governmental
bodies, including the Zoological Board of Victoria (1944-1965),
the National Museum of Victoria, of which he was a Trustee and
Council Member from 1954 to 1982, and the Medical Advisory Committee
to the Mental Hygiene Authority of Victoria (1952-1963).
Sunderland was one of the twenty-three Foundation Fellows of the
Australian Academy of Science and played an important part in
its early development. He, along with O.W. Tiegs and T.M. Cherry,
was assigned the task of drafting the bye-laws of the Academy.
Dr John Nicholson became the first Secretary (Biological Sciences)
in 1954 but resigned early in the following year. Sunderland was
elected to succeed him (1955-1958) and joined the Council, which
included Mark Oliphant as President, David Martyn as Secretary
(Physical Sciences) and Hedley Marston as Treasurer. In this early
stage of the Academy's history, much of the Council's business
was complex and contentious and its meetings were quite turbulent.
Martyn and Marston were bitter adversaries who could never agree.
Sunderland was friendly with the other members of the Council
but found that he could rarely if ever make peace between the
contestants. This frustrating and tedious period was one that
Sunderland was later to recall without any enthusiasm.
Sunderland was also an active member of the Council's Building
Committee that selected Roy Grounds to design the Academy's building
in Canberra. Since he knew Grounds and lived in Melbourne, Sunderland
was assigned the task of interacting with the architect, and as
a consequence played an important role in the Building Committee's
deliberations.
Governing bodies and boards of management of research institutes
sought Sunderland's advice and judgment throughout his career.
He was a long-time member of the Council of the University of
Melbourne, of the Committee of Management of the Royal Melbourne
Hospital and of the Board of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
of Medical Research, and a Trustee of the Van Cleef Foundation.
In recognition of Sir Sydney's thirty years' service as a Governor
of the Ian Potter Foundation from 1964 until 1993, in 1994 this
Foundation established the annual Sunderland Award of $10,000
to enable a selected young neurobiologist, working in a field
that would have interested Sir Sydney, to gain research experience
in an overseas laboratory of the recipient's choice.
By the 1950s, Sydney Sunderland's work was becoming widely recognized
and respected by those clinical groups concerned with nerve injuries
in human subjects, a reputation that was greatly enhanced by the
publication of the first edition of Nerves and Nerve Injuries
in 1968. As a result, he was invited to lecture at more than
fifty international symposia and conferences in the United Kingdom,
Switzerland, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Austria,
the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, China, Japan,
Singapore, and Hong Kong. Lady Sunderland accompanied him to each
of these meetings, often four to six per year. Sunderland enjoyed
these meetings, and continued to participate in them in his eighties.
A remarkable and unique tribute to Sydney Sunderland's contribution
to the clinical study of nerve injury was the formation of the
Sunderland Society in the early 1980s. The following resume of
the origins of this society is based on information provided by
Drs George E. Omer, Jr and J. Leonard Goldner (see acknowledgments).
In 1978 a group of surgeons interested in peripheral nerve pathology
met at Duke University with J. Leonard Goldner as host, in order
to explore the possibility of establishing a Peripheral Nerve
Study Group. Following on from this, it was agreed that clinicians
and research scientists with an interest in peripheral nerves
should meet periodically to exchange their clinical experience,
to assess recent advances in research on peripheral nerves, to
establish what important issues were not understood, and to attempt
to direct research into these latter problems. Action was prompt
and in August 1979 a group including Drs Spinner, Curtis, Kutz,
Omer, Wilgis, Jabalay, Urbaniak and Tupper set about organizing
a formal meeting of the Study Group. The membership of this Group
was quickly expanded to about 22, and included some from the United
States, Austria, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland. Sunderland was
invited to join the Group in 1980.
Just prior to this time, the second edition of Sir Sydney's Nerve
and Nerve Injuries was published and he was invited by the
President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, George
Omer, to be the Founders Lecturer at the 1979 meeting of this
Society in San Francisco. These events duly prompted the Study
Group to adopt the new name of the Sunderland Society, a change
that was unanimously accepted by all its members. This change
was in recognition of Sir Sydney's considerable contribution to
our current understanding of the biology and pathology of peripheral
nerves at a level of immediate relevance to neurologists and neurosurgeons
involved in the management and surgery of peripheral nerve lesions.
Sir Sydney was delighted by this honour and, along with Lady Sunderland,
attended the meeting of the Sunderland Society at Santa Fe in
May 1983. Furthermore, he was an active participant in all the
following twelve meetings, some in Europe, up till 1993. The most
recent meeting of the Sunderland Society was in Zurich in 1995,
hosted by Professor V.E. Meyer.
Sir Sydney Sunderland walked the corridors of power for the greater
part of his long professional career. In spite of this he remained
a genuinely attractive man, shrewd but both generous and optimistic
in his judgment of others. He was an enthusiast and could quickly
become excited by new experimental findings of his colleagues.
In the last ten years of his life when I came to know him a little
through regular contact in the Department of Anatomy, I could
always be sure of arousing his critical interest by telling him
of our recent experiments on the macaque's cortex. He had traced
out cortical connections in the macaque fifty years earlier in
Le Gros Clark's laboratory, and retained a clear image of the
questions that still need to be answered. One was sure of a useful
but critical discussion of cortical structure, and of the experiments
just completed. Furthermore, everyone in our laboratory, from
student to professor, could be sure of being taken seriously by
Sir Sydney in any such discussion. For this alone he gained their
lasting respect and affection. At a more down-to-earth level,
Sunderland was generous in his support for any investigator seeking
funds whom he judged to be working on a good, well-defined biological
problem, and who had the skills to do the necessary experiments.
Sunderland dedicated all his monographs to his wife, Nina Gwendoline
Sunderland, and insisted that without her help and support throughout
his career these would not have been published. Lady Sunderland
graduated as a lawyer at the University of Melbourne in 1938,
before her marriage to Sydney in 1939, and completed her articles
on returning to Australia. After that she committed much of her
time to helping him prepare and publish his many research papers
and his three major books, and she accompanied him to many of
the professional meetings at which he spoke. Their son, Ian Sydney
Sunderland, graduated in medicine at the University of Melbourne,
and is Investigating Officer for the Medical Practitioners Board
of Victoria.
Sir Sydney Sunderland died on 27 August 1993, in his 83rd
year.
| 1935 | M.B., B.S. Melbourne |
| 1941 | F.R.A.C.P. |
| 1945 | D.Sc. Melbourne |
| 1946 | M.D. Melbourne |
| 1952 | F.R.A.C.S. (Honorary) |
| 1954 | F.A.A. (Foundation Fellow) |
| 1961 | C.M.G. |
| 1970 | M.D. (Honorary) Tasmania |
| 1975 | M.D. (Honorary) Queensland |
| 1975 | LL.D. (Honorary) Melbourne |
| 1977 | LL.D. (Honorary) Monash |
| 1971 (12 June) |
Knight Bachelor |
| 1936-1937 | Senior Lecturer in Anatomy, University of Melbourne |
| 1936-1937 | Honorary Assistant Neurologist and Neurosurgeon, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne |
| 1939-1961 | Professor of Anatomy, University of Melbourne |
| 1953-1954 | Visiting Professor of Anatomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md, USA |
| 1953-1971 | Dean of Medicine, University of Melbourne |
| 1951-1975 | Professor of Experimental Neurology, University of Melbourne |
| 1972-1978 | Fogarty Scholar in Residence, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md, USA |
| 1976-1993 | Professor Emeritus, University of Melbourne |
| 1977 | Sterling Bunnell Lecturer and Visiting Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, University of California, USA |
| 1979 |
Founders Lecturer, American Society for Surgery of the Hand |
| 1951-1967 | Member of Council, University of Melbourne |
| 1957-1969 | Australian Representative on Pacific Science Council |
| 1960-1968 | Member of Victorian State Council, Australian Medical Association |
| 1963-1971 | Member, Committee of Management, Royal Melbourne Hospital |
| 1964-1993 | Governor, Ian Potter Foundation |
| 1968-1975 | Member of Board, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne |
| 1971-1993 | Trustee, Van Cleef Foundation, Melbourne |
| 1972-1993 | Member, Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, Melbourne |
| 1975-1978 | Vice-President, International Association for the Study of Pain |
| 1964 | Australian Association of Neurologists |
| 1971 | Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland |
| 1973 | Anatomical Society of Australia and New Zealand |
| 1975 | Neurosurgical Society of Australasia |
| 1975 | Australian Medical Association |
| 1975 |
American Neurological Association |
| 1958-1969 | Member, National Health and Medical Research Council, and Medical Research Advisory Committee |
| 1964-1969 | Chairman, Medical Research Advisory Committee, NH&MRC |
| 1957-1975 | Member, Defence Research and Development Policy Committee, Dept. Defence |
| 1957-1978 | Member, Defence Medical Services Committee, Dept. Defence |
| 1957-1964 | Member, National Radiation Advisory Committee (Chairman, 1959-1964) |
| 1961-1974 | Chairman, Safety Review Committee, Australian Atomic Energy Commission |
| 1962-1976 | Member, Australian Universities Commission |
| 1964-1973 | Chairman, Protective Chemistry Research Advisory Committee, Dept. Supply |
| 1970-1971 |
Advisory Medical Council of Australia |
Lady Sunderland provided the author with many details of the career
of Sir Sydney, and with various documents that he wrote. I am
most grateful to her. George E. Omer, Jr, Professor and Chairman
Emeritus, Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, University
of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and J. Leonard Goldner, James B. Duke
Professor, Chief Emeritus, Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, Division
of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham sent the author
a detailed account of the formation of the Sunderland Society
and its subsequent history. I thank them for their great assistance.
Professor Graeme Ryan helped. in many ways in preparing this memoir.
Iris Welcome uncovered many University documents relevant to it,
and typed the bibliography.
Jones, F. Wood, The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand, 2nd edition (London: Railliere, Tindall and Cox, 1941).
Haymaker, W,, and F. Schiller, The Founders of Neurology, 2nd edition (Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 1970).
Le Gros Clark, W., Chant of Pleasant Exploration (Edinburgh: Livingstone, 1968).
Penfield, W., and H. Jasper, Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy
of the Human Brain (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).
Ian Darian-Smith, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, and Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052.
This memoir was originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 11, no. 1, June 1996, pp. 51-65.